Thought this might be of interest, especially since [John?] was working on a portable version of VirtualBox:
http://blogs.sun.com/tpm/entry/virtualbox
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didn't think that we were working on VirtualBox and that QEMU was chosen instead???
Someone was working on it.
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."
He Kinda Was.
What would that mean in terms of license?
It'll stay open source.
But ofcource, people can still make additions for free. But I'm afraid there will be a version that people need to pay for while the product was created by people for free.
It would be like many people offering software for free, and someone comes along and goes about selling an expanded version of the software by adding a few "enterprise" functions. I think that is just unfair for all the people who worked on a product for free with the intention it would never become part of a commercial thing.
-- I'm of the understanding that Sun is sold on Open Source as a good investment. From what I understand, they are the primary contributor/support of OpenOffice.org.
-- Their philosophy has long been to invest in Open Source development and then turn around and offer their own branded versions along with long-term support. They can charge for all the multi-product integration and maintenence/upgrade effort without having in their pricing to cover for code development & maintenence.
-- It's a win-win-win situation. Sun's customers get lower prices, better and more solid software, and the kind of hand-holding support that businesses need. Sun can offer better & more reliable software along with their commercial systems at competitive pricing. And the Open Source community benefits by the the investment support it gets from commercial vendors.
-- Currently on the OOo website ( http://www.openoffice.org/ ) there's an announcement that Sun Microsystems announced on 2007.12.07 their putting up a $1 M USD fund to foster innovation and community in six open-source projects (that includes OOo).
---eom
What about the people supplying the code. Do they ever get some money from it?
What money? Sun is paying to support the costs these projects have, not pay them to develop it.
What do you mean, I don't think I understand correctly.
Don't get me wrong, I like open source unless it becomes some modern kind of slavery where people work for free to make something cool together and someone omes along and 'buys' it and starts to make money for themselves from it. Not through services and support but actually selling software based on people's work.
I agree completely. However, you'd need consent from all the code contributers to try to sell the software, etc.
In some projects, the company hires a developer or three to work on the code, perhaps as quality assurance or lead visionary or possibly as wrangler for volunteer developers.
Volunteer developers understand that they are volunteers and work with no expectation of monetary rewards. Their motivation varies, usually some combination of passion for a particular product or for open source, sometimes acknowledgment in the list of contributors, or satisfaction for a job well done. Sometimes they leverage their development experience into support gigs, sometimes it is just a hobbyist's pastime.
MC
-- Before discussion goes too far, below for listed review are some background material that underlies my comment above (February 16, 2008 - 9:08pm), re "win-win-win situation." Note that the last source cited describes a "Trinity of the Blur" where money is only one tangible component that can be part of an exchange that includes other measures of value.
-- I for one can hardly express enough gratitude for all the no-cost resources are available on the net, such as OpenOffice.org and Portable Apps. But someone still has to pay for creating, maintaining & supporting the infrastructure that provides for it's availability as a non-cost resource on the net.
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
Open source
Commons-based peer production
Ubuntu Linux Philosophy
Note: Ubuntu relationship with commercial efforts of Canonical & Dell.
Gift economy
"Blur: The Speed of Change in the Connected Economy (Paperback)"
Quote from book introduction: “An ‘economy’ is the way people use resources … specific ways they do this have changed several times through history, and they are shifting again – this time driven by three forces – Connectivity, Speed, and the growth of Intangible value. …"
update:
2009.07.01 removed dead links
NOTE: Gartner article (MoreAboutTCO) cited & commented on in many articles/documents still available on the web.
ALSO NOTE:
Sun just released v 3.0 of VBox with options for free use under their
VirtualBox Personal Use and Evaluation License (PUEL) as well as an Open Source Edition (OSE) under GPL (ref http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/VirtualBox_PUEL )
please look at the dates, you'll note that all comments were from last year, please don't revive dead topics, it's frowned upon
your friendly neighbourhood moderator Zach Thibeau